Marco Arment

"The new Slide to Stop button is still as large as the Snooze and Stop buttons, so Apple keeps its updated design, while solving the problem that it introduced. In iOS 18, the Snooze and Stop buttons were much smaller and had a significant degree of separation, so it was difficult to hit stop when you meant to hit snooze.”

The Alan Dye era: a new design creates problems, requiring more hacks and complexity to evade, ending up less usable and elegant than the old design.

https://www.macrumors.com/2025/10/06/apple-fixes-alarms-in-ios-26-1/

Apple Fixes Alarms in iOS 26.1

With the second beta of iOS 26.1, Apple updated the design of alarms set on the iPhone, making them harder to dismiss than before. Stopping an...

MacRumors
Oct 6 at 8:37pmIvory for Mac
Show threadMarco ArmentOct 6
(Tesla should hire Alan Dye to design its door handles. A perfect fit.)
Show threadJulian KussmanOct 6
@marcoarment I am NOT de-icing my timers every morning
Show threadDarryl RammOct 6

@marcoarment

Apple should gift Alan Dye to Google/Android.

Show threadRay GreenwellOct 6
@marcoarment the door handles vanish on impact, making more room for your burning-to-death.
Show threadChad C.Oct 6
@marcoarment Why so hateful man? Every post now of days is filled with venom and “i know betterism” as if your farts don’t stink.
Show threadApolloOct 7
@dominocollege @marcoarment because it is refreshing to see Apple users actually critizing what is obviously broken. The same broken as Teslas crappy door handles.
Show threadChad C.Oct 7
@apollo @marcoarment You must be new here. Tribalism and Criticizing Apple is sport here— inability to look past their own experiences and subjective tastes.
Show threadWink and the Broken RobotOct 8
@dominocollege It’s nice to see people criticize Apple when they suck instead of making excuses
Show threadChancerubbageOct 7

@marcoarment

https://youtu.be/vJAArZYu7fo

Wiron Cube: Zero-Tolerance Machining | High-Precision Fidget Desk Toy

YouTube
Show threadWink and the Broken RobotOct 8
@marcoarment Anything that gets him away from MacOS would be a huge plus
Show threadbjörnOct 6
@marcoarment I dunno: on the watch I tend to hit the dull interest of the snooze button and I wish(ed) for a slide button. This might be one of the “a blind chicken finds a seed” thing.
Show threadAndy NormanOct 7
@boki @marcoarment on watchOS 26 I basically can’t read the alarm buttons first thing in the morning, I’m randomly stabbing where I hope the stop button is 😢
Show threadRichard ChamberlainOct 6
@marcoarment I was so pleased with the new large snooze button! My old, blurry eyes in the morning were very grateful I didn’t have to have several stabs at it.
Show threadDayton LowellOct 6
@marcoarment I generally agree with your thoughts on Alan Dye, but the massive Snooze button is an improvement and all of us that hate mornings know it.
Show threadtoastedmilkOct 6
@Daytonlowell @marcoarment the problem isn’t that the snooze button is massive. It’s that the stop button is the same size and right under it.
Show threadDayton LowellOct 9
@Finin @marcoarment And to quote Steve Jobs, they “wanted something you couldn’t do accidentally”, so they added slide-to-stop. I think it's a very reasonable design decision.
Show threadDayton LowellOct 9
@Finin @marcoarment I'd rather have both controls at the bottom of the screen where I can reach them with one hand. Plus it feels like it pays homage to the OG iPhone. Slide to unlock was a legit fun UI to interact with.
Show threadCameron LengerichOct 6
@marcoarment honestly, I really like the idea of Slide to Stop, because I still just couldn’t differentiate them quick enough when the alarm goes off in the morning
Show threadVeedemsOct 6
I think this is an elegant solution that is long overdue. I’ve hit the old stop button in previous versions by mistake. This just makes sense regardless of overall design language.
Show threadzkarjOct 6
@marcoarment I thought the old design was worse because I couldn't read either button! I thought maybe I'd learn not to hit the bright orange thing, but no, I never did. I vastly prefer what we have in 26.0. Even if I can only read the orange button through bleary, just-woken eyes, I know it's the wrong one to hit.
Show threadJohn LagomarsinoOct 6
@marcoarment not to mention, what happens to that slider button when the text is in other languages or the user has larger text enabled?
Show threadMichaelOct 6
@johnlago @marcoarment Slide to s
Show threadJeff HobbsOct 6
@michaelrjohnson @johnlago @marcoarment That's what it will say on my mini, guar-an-teed
Show threadThe MacinthropeOct 6
@marcoarment This just makes me miss “Slide to Unlock”.
Show threadtoastedmilkOct 6
@marcoarment I also dunno how much sliding I wanna do when my mounted iPhone is an arms reach away at 5am
Show threadCaleb Hearth Oct 6
@marcoarment Kinda fun to have the answer a call motion back though.
Show threadMutesplashOct 6
@marcoarment I find this infinitely better than one-touch stop, no matter the size, because one touch will now never stop the alarm.
Show threadNumeric CitizenOct 6
@marcoarment why not put the snooze at the very top and snooze at the bottom… could be operated with eyes closed.
Show threadHappy StrikerOct 6
@marcoarment honestly, I hate the snooze feature and I wish for a setting, that will disable snooze for all new alarms i create once and for all 😅
Show threadTimOct 7

@happystriker I just have a bunch of predefined alarms saved (6:00, 6:20, 6:40, 7:00, etc.) which have snooze disabled, then I always just enable/disable those alarms as needed, rather than creating a new one every time.

But yeah, I wish I could make it so any new ones would default to having snooze disabled so I wouldn't have to remember to turn it off whenever I do need to add a new one.

Show threadMathias af JochnickOct 7
@marcoarment These buttons are a bit, right? it has to be a bit.
Show threadWenshOct 7
@marcoarment hard disagree, new design is much better than the old design. Makes it easier to hit the buttons, adding a slide action is good to avoid accidental hits.
Show threadAnders HovmöllerOct 7
@marcoarment The basic problem isn't the design. It's that Apple insists on a monopoly on the design. No one else can make an alarm app.
Show threadJeremyOct 7
@boxed Did you even bother searching the App Store to see if this is true? Of course there are other alarm apps.
Show threadAnders HovmöllerOct 8

@jeremyh Yes there are alarm apps. But have you tried any? I'm pretty sure you haven't because if you had you would know that they don't have a proper way to display an alarm view when the alarm goes off. They have to use hacks like notifications or live activity.

Again: Apple dictates the design. If you are ok with notifications or live activity, or Apples own design you're good. But otherwise there is nothing you can do.

Show threadnSonicOct 7

@marcoarment Slide … to stop the alarm early in the morning. Sure.
I can see my iPhone falling of the table when I try such gesture one-handed half sleeping.

Really „good“ idea.

But now we are pretty sure that they had no Designers at Apple besides I’ve, right? Sure not Everything was great or perfect back then but take a look at 2025 at Apple - what’s going on there?

Show threadyProdOct 7
@marcoarment In this one case, maybe through sheer luck, the end result seems better, in my humble opinion. Much safer against drowsiness-induced accidents!
Show threadPedro FernandesOct 7
@marcoarment the font is so big that for some reason it looks like it is out of focus, or with a poor anti-aliasing. I instinctively feel uncomfortable that people think I have my font set to an 80 old year eyesight level.
Show threadPedro FernandesOct 7
@marcoarment Also, for me the snooze problem has been solved for ages. I just push the volume up or volume down button to snooze.
Show threadnot that coachmikeOct 7
@marcoarment Maybe at some point, they’ll also get around to the “stop playing“ option at the end of a timer to… you know… stop playing the audio instead of PLAYING A FUCKING ALARM.
Show threadJacob 0xFFFOct 7
@marcoarment
Hey that reminds me, this ui in Overcast is low contrast and very fiddly to try to set to 20min.
Having to tap 30 and then -10 is real counter intuitive. Makes me miss the old design every time.
Show threadLeonickOct 7
@marcoarment I like it. It’s a better solution than big snooze small stop was. Separating them again wouldn’t be bad though.
Show threadReidOct 7
@marcoarment the new ios26 buttons are so awkwardly ugly.
Show threadpixelbudOct 14
@marcoarment it also only seems to slide if you tap and hold on the square stop icon. The entire “button” face of the slider isn’t a tap target. At least that’s how it behaves on my iOS 26 Beta 2.